Vinita Bhatia

Abhay Singhal, co-founder of InMobi and CEO of InMobi Advertising, believes AI agents will transform how digital advertising operates, but consumers will always retain control over the final transaction.

Ahead of the Creative Strategy winners announcement tomorrow, jury member Sinha calls for 'mini-Cannes' events to take the festival's thinking beyond the Croisette.

At Cannes Lions, Sherry Smith, president of retail media, Criteo, discusses the rise of AI-driven shopping, APAC's fragmented retail media landscape and the battle for consumer attention.

INSIDE THE AD: Three decades after its India entry, the quick service restaurant chain has expanded the meaning of family in its latest campaign.

As clients chase quarterly sales, Madison World’s chairman Sam Balsara argues that agencies must still defend brand-building or risk weakening long-term growth.

In an industry often drawn towards complexity, Cheil India’s Shubham Dangwal and Aishwarya Mitra found that the most effective ideas are sometimes hiding in plain sight.

Dream Slate Pictures’ campaign, now a Cannes Lions 2026 Creative Commerce contender, highlights how consumer behaviour change and AI-enabled creativity can drive measurable commercial outcomes.

In its second act, the multinational renewable energy solutions provider is rebuilding its brand positioning, following a turbulent history.

Sougandh Pramod and Malvika Anil Kumar’s submission didn’t just predict technology’s future, but interrogated the nature of trust itself.

Google India’s vice-president for marketing maintains that organisations seeing success with AI are redefining their measures of success.

As Cannes Lions Health & Wellness jury president, Ogilvy India’s chief creative officer says strong ideas, not just business metrics, must lead judging.

This observation from dentsu Creative’s art director, also 2025 Young Lion from India, increasingly resonates across an industry that's reconciling instinct-driven creativity with data-led accountability

A Cannes Lions juror, Rao argues that gamification now shapes culture, education, employability and products—forcing agencies to rethink gaming communities beyond media buys and visibility metrics.

Young marketers increasingly want exposure to business thinking early, as clients grow less patient with execution-only talent pipelines.

BBDO India’s Josy Paul explains how entries demand visible cultural change, long-term commitment, and ideas designed to move society; not merely marketing metrics.

Managing partner Varun Shah argues that AI can scale assets, but human instinct, cultural nuance and craft still determine advertising relevance and business outcomes.

Omnicom Global Solutions’ CEO believes that anything that needs to be automated, should be.

CMO Sapna Desai says AI tools are now common; sharper thinking and cultural nuance will increasingly define brand differentiation.

WPP Media South Asia’s managing director - content, sports and entertainment, notes that sports remains advertising’s last reliable appointment-viewing engine delivering guaranteed, mass simultaneous audiences.

India country manager Kumaresh Pattabiraman says top sellers prioritise buyer intent signals, engaging key stakeholders early with timely insights over volume-led outreach.

Piramal Consumer Healthcare’s CEO explains how precision reshapes capital allocation as quick commerce dominates, and every impression, click and conversion is held accountable.

Innocean India’s MD and CEO finds most agencies are still fragmented beneath well-presented integration narratives, which is where they fall short.

With 60% of searches ending without clicks, AdLift pivots from traffic metrics to ‘answer presence’ as visibility reshapes performance marketing benchmarks.

Probing into serious horology, Titan plans to balance engineering credibility with storytelling to compete with global players

The Australian-born digital futurist and marketer suggests that the industry may be over-engineering what was once a straightforward craft: building human connection.

INSIDE THE AD: BHIM’s ‘Mahi Way’ featuring MS Dhoni shifts from spectacle to simplicity, targeting transaction hesitation over noise in India’s competitive UPI market.

Bisleri International’s vice chairperson believes that perception of premium brands shifts slowly, and then, all at once.

Khurana’s remit is to bring precision, enabling the online marketplace to scale 35,000+ expert matches within 72 hours.

INSIDE THE AD: Swapping scripted marketing for creator-led storytelling, the haircare brand hands narrative control to customers in its #ProofHaiBoss campaign.

Magnite’s VP and MD for Asia explains how retail media offers control, while live sports delivers scale without predictability.

The head of creative technology at Publicis Groupe APAC explains why AI still needs human rigour.

Amid legacy players and influencer brands, its founder Diipa Büller-Khosla reframes competition, moving from product differentiation to philosophy-led storytelling and experiential retail.

KRBL Limited’s vice president for marketing and organised trade maintains that the biggest challenge for marketers is creating a distinct brand identity in a cluttered FMCG space.

The health insurance company exclusively mentioned to Campaign that it's beta-testing a new AI-driven tele-calling infrastructure that has been trained on millions of past interactions.

NEC Corporation India’s Ikigai recasts marketing as culture, but only sustained experimentation—not alignment alone—will convert coherence into credible market outcomes.

While the AI tool lowers creative barriers for MSMEs, can it drive sustained SMB spend or deepen reliance on a closed-loop platform ecosystem?

Having raised INR136 crore recently, the co-founder outlines plans to scale offline reach, build markets, and balance brand investment with margins.

In storytelling economies, representation shapes outcomes; without structural shifts behind the camera, on-screen gains risk remaining incremental and uneven.

As print struggles to attract Gen Z and millennials, The Economist’s global head of advertising explains how legacy publishers are moving towards digital and video formats to sustain engagement.

As AI reshapes marketing, NP Digital’s co-founder maintains that disciplined experimentation, not hype, emerges as the clearest path to measurable growth and sustained competitive advantage.

Sigma’s India rollout follows its global debut in June 2025, aiming to simplify fragmented programmatic buying through data integration and AI-driven planning efficiency.

Mintegral’s senior director of business development, APAC, Khai Le, points to maturing monetisation depth and engagement patterns across Vietnam, India and Indonesia.

As measurement tools sharpen, agencies confront a tougher task: shifting bias checks upstream, embedding inclusion into briefs before budgets and scripts solidify.

Continental Coffee calibrates TV-heavy reach in the South with digital precision elsewhere, using SKU strategy and rising budgets to expand occasions without diluting cues.

EXCLUSIVE: After pausing acquisitions for 18 months, the Dutch agency leans on its 200-partner ownership model to prioritise client value over headline growth metrics.

Havas Creative Network’s global chief transformation and growth officer argues that fewer, better-aligned clients drive stronger growth and accountability.

As AI moves into media planning, vernacular scale and ROI modelling, agencies confront a tougher question: infrastructure upgrade or strategic edge?

The real estate major swings to a generational brand platform, tracking cost per lead, walk-ins and branded search to measure pull over push demand.

As conversational discovery reshapes OTT, brands must track high-intent prompts, thematic recurrence and downstream behaviour—while building relevance and privacy guardrails.

AI&Beyond’s co-founder outlines how Yuva.ai shifts AI training from certificates to demonstrable work, tied to briefs, metrics and accountability.

INSIDE THE AD: Plum sent 60 founders a hand-painted evil-eye doll and a QR code, recasting business insurance as culture-led consultation rather than fear-led compliance.

S4 Capital’s executive chairman says hyperscalers’ $600 billion AI capex shift is breaking profit–agency revenue link.

It staged its Formula 1 entry as a phased, multi-brand rollout, arguing cultural fit and earned engagement outweigh blanket visibility.

With India driving 47.4% of global searches, Rado reviews US ambassador strategy to balance growth, equity and market diversification.

From reframing ‘Zubaan Pe Rakhe Lagaam’ to ‘Dimaag Pe Rakhe Lagaam’ and launching the India Overthinking Report, the brand stress-tests legacy through cultural insight.

Snap’s 9,000-respondent DWBI ranks India highest. Yet, cyberbullying, misinformation and addictive design expose Gen Z risks, pushing brands toward stronger guardrails.

Despite biscuits seeing roughly 55% rural consumption, it prioritises metros as strongholds, using selective distribution and premium positioning over mass expansion.

By tapping Warner Bros franchises, the lab-grown diamond brand tests whether licensed IP can shift diamonds from heirlooms to culturally relevant, repeatable consumer products.

The café chain’s Protein Cold Foam pushes functional coffee into daily rituals, walking a tightrope between habit-building, health fatigue and protein-washing scepticism.

After a five-year stint at Havas Life, former chief creative officer bets on independence, amid shifting agency economics.

From curated trails and creator-led rituals, coffee marketing shows how culture and content now drive premiumisation among young urban consumers.

CEO Neal Mohan’s 2026 roadmap reframes the platform’s focus on creator infrastructure, tightening links between content, advertising, commerce and measurable outcomes.

Burson’s global study quantifies reputation as deployable capital, linking credibility gaps, workplace choices and governance to measurable shareholder returns.

With the launch of Kaizzen AI Collective, the communications agency expects at least two dozen Indian clients to engage in AI-led communications intelligence by FY2026.

From trailers to feeds, creator-led promotions now anchor film launches, reshaping budgets, discovery mechanics and how opening momentum is measured.

With these introductions, the media agency reframes AI as a strategic planning partner, not an execution shortcut.

Reframing mediocrity as transition, the Reliance Retail fashion brand’s caregiver-led campaigns used reassurance over aspiration to drive footfalls, relevance and measurable retail outcomes.

Its ‘My Guiding Light’ campaign centres personal agency in diamond buying, positioning value-led choice amid rising competition from lab-grown diamonds.

Campaign Explainer: India’s warning over Grok revives advertiser anxieties from 2022, reopening questions of brand safety, platform accountability and Musk-era moderation gaps.

Across categories and platforms, the year’s standout campaigns trusted audiences, tapped lived behaviour, and let cultural insight — not clutter — drive impact.

Season five’s TV comeback underscores that reaching its next growth phase will depend on advertisers evolving with audiences, not slicing them into narrow demographics.

Epsilon India’s SVP-Analytics explains how person-based marketing confronts duplication, blind spots and false scale, turning identity resolution into a commercial, not technical, decision.

The martech agency is executing a 26-company acquisition roadmap to achieve a 100-crore profit benchmark for its public market debut.

In the noise of the country’s booming live entertainment market, experiential utility, not visibility, has become the differentiator.

A phased rollout amplified brand ambassador Jennifer Lopez’s film organically, clocking 30,41,862 impressions and 85,209 engagements beyond the usual endorsement spike.

A creator-led launch and cinematic brand film aim to spark desire and impulse online, sidestepping price cues in a crowded gourmet snacks market.

Rohit Dadwal, CEO of MMA Global Asia Pacific, explains why marketers must stop chasing dashboards and start designing for relevance in a world that scrolls fast, but still remembers what matters.

How Chupps and Into Creative are leaning on sombre storytelling to sell sustainability.

The indigenous fashion brand taps rising cultural confidence as India’s youth weigh local design, digital discovery, and lifestyle ambition in an increasingly competitive market.

Emraan Hashmi and Raghav Juyal anchor the annual campaign as India’s data-led, creator-heavy listening habits take centre stage.

Its ‘Scam 2025’ campaign leans on entertainment-led storytelling to decode digital fraud, signalling a shift in how brands approach financial literacy.

Its #FreeStyleIt campaign adopts a cinematic, platform-led strategy to test whether stylised storytelling can convert youth attention into measurable action.

Piramal Finance’s marketing campaign reframes lending through ethnographic insight, regional nuance and a distribution engine built for semi-urban India’s next wave of borrowers.

Lalatendu Das, CEO, Publicis Media South Asia explains why brand marketers are still figuring out India’s fastest-growing retail channel.

As AI scales, Edelman’s president of Integrated Solutions and Delivery believes that the real battle is protecting trust and originality. In 2026, integration is inevitable, but integrity is not optional.

Can its blend of global heritage, local cultural narrative, and controlled rollout strategy move beyond curiosity?

As the agency plants its flag in India, its founder and India head share the strategy behind its ‘Greater Southeast Asia’ ambition

Its shift to emotional sleep wellbeing, unveiled alongside its DRHP filing, tests whether stress relief can drive premiumisation in India’s fragmented mattress market.

Its #DrinkItUp 2.0 campaign leans on the learning that hydration had moved from utility to a part of fitness, self-care and cultural expression amongst Gen Z.

Nikhil Sharma explains how grounded fundamentals, humour-led assets and distribution scale continue to anchor Perfetti Van Melle’s playbook in the country’s fragmented, fast-shifting confectionary market.

Its latest campaign tests whether calibrated humour and creator-led candour can shift India’s long-standing silence around everyday digestive discomfort.

The App Banking edition pushes the 90-year-old Hasbro franchise into hybrid territory, raising fresh questions for marketers about modernising legacy IP without losing its core appeal.

At MMA Smarties Unplugged India, her conversation with Campaign turned from creativity to capability — and why marketing’s traditional role may no longer fit today’s business realities.

On Children’s Day, director Keith Gomes and activist Dipesh Tank discuss how Dear Men seeks to make India look unflinchingly at trafficking — and why brands hesitate to engage.

As Indian brands move from spectacle to substance, the agency’s founder Jai Sharma explains how experiential design is becoming measurable strategy and why emotion now defines marketing effectiveness.

By embedding AI into its new production model, the agency aims to balance automation with emotion — scaling storytelling without losing its human core.

EXCLUSIVE: LinkedIn’s marketing head says while AI sharpens data and precision, it’s human insight, empathy, and creativity that keep marketing truly powerful and effective.

AI was not positioned as a replacement for human creativity, but as an intelligent collaborator that could reshape the marketing and creative ecosystem.

By treating in-housing as collaboration, not competition, PHD is reframing agency relationships through trust, empathy, and tech-enabled adaptability amid industry consolidation.